Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Too trite to be true... but hey, having spent all my philosophical thoughts on the past year...

Trying to determine the origin of this statement led to some
very interesting trivia, including one person who maintains that it originated
with Lee Douglas IV –
of the 5th clan of the Doogals, who eventually became the Douglas
clan- its meaning being ‘out with the old‘ (his mother who was a lady of the
night) and in with the new (his mistress). Hmmm...

So
then I went on to “wiping the slate clean” as that is what I have done in
preparation for THE NEW YEAR.

Finally able to see the design on the bulletin board!

Command central.... ready for 2014

Now
last December 31st after the death of my sister, I reckoned that
2013 was going to be a good year. Maybe I shouldn’t be making predictions as it
was a very mixed year at best.

However,
“hope springs eternal” (to use another cliché… maybe my goal should be not to
use clichés in 2014? At least I know the origin of this one – Alexander Pope in
An Essay on Man) and I am going to
think that the possibilities for a lovely year in 2014 are endless.

Imagine throwing into some dinner party conversation: oh, did you see the
bleb on my foot… or

I have a bleb somewhere that really bothers me, or do you
ever get blebs?

Come on, I dare you, bleb, bleb, bleb.

Or you could, in the medical world, have blebbing (the noun)
or perhaps in the philosophical world your thoughts (like mine at this point)
are all blebby (adj.).

Have fun – look for more of those: blab, bleb, blib, blob,
blub. Roll them off your tongue, look up blib (yep its an actual word)in the
Urban dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=blib
(especially #5 – who knew?). Have a great day in the world of words.

Saturday, December 28, 2013

One of my favorite young adults
gifted me with a “gimmick” – one that I tried out two days later sitting in
front of the television.

Although I can’t explain the
physical process (or rather probably chemical), this is a wonderful hot water
bottle! One presses on the small metallic circle inside the bottle and crystals
form slowly over the next 30 minutes (that’s what they say – the heat actually
lasted a lot longer). Totally re-usable, one has only to plop it into hot water
for 20 minutes or so to re-dissolve the crystals – and Voilà ready for the next
use.

But it isn’t just the physical
warmth, it is the warmth I feel every time I see it and think of the person who
gave it to me! Long may both continue to function.

Friday, December 27, 2013

Now looking at the picture above of prettily and cleverly
manicured nails, one wouldn’t suspect chain of events, which that set off.

Running an errand for my housemate this morning, I spoke
with the lady-of-the-painted-nails – and regretted not having my camera with me
to take a picture of the very decorative effect.

Promised though that I would return.

At home, decided that as I also wanted to take the hall
porter in the building that my younger son lives in something besides just the
usual wine, and thinking about a remark from one of the son-in-laws of another
good friend that he was missing chocolate chip cookies, I took it into my head
to quickly bake a batch (I love baking, but obviously for one person alone I
need an outlet for some of it or I would quickly look like my house – and perhaps
no longer be able to get into said house either!).

So an hour or so later I had boxed up a few for the
possessor of the nails; another tin for the hall porter with the remainder for
my friend and I am totally side tracked from the errands of the day.

Thursday, December 26, 2013

More times than I can count, I will start something, which
in turn, leads to something else finding me often totally off the rhythm or
plans for that particular moment

This morning is a case in point: having slept poorly the
night before, last night I got my full 8 hours – waking up once only to roll
over and doze off again, making it 8 am when I finally arose. Knowing that I
was invited up to the neighbors for lunch meant that I didn’t need to rush
breakfast – first mistake.Whilst
waiting for my roll to bake I decided to finish washing out the pan that I had
left soaking yesterday (red cabbage is my contribution to lunch today). It had
several months of use on it and was no longer pristine clean: second mistake –
deciding that it needed my special cleaning (i.e. a bit of salt and vinegar,
boil, let sit, polish: throw in a couple cloves and the kitchen also smells
wonderful). That, in turn, led to my deciding that the other pots needed the
same special cleaning whilst I was at it. Mistake three: that uncovered their
spot in the cupboard, which looked in need of a clean itself.All of a sudden I found myself cleaning the
lower shelf of the pots and pans cupboard, including the bottom of the cupboard
itself.

An hour later I was finally ready to re-heat the coffee and
warm up the roll when the phone rang: my neighbors asking if they could push
back lunch. Great, now having breakfast late makes sense.

Does it make a difference in the grand scheme of
things? No, not even a dent. But what a feeling of accomplishment – my pans are
now almost in the same shape as when I acquired them and I can, with feelings
of virtuousness, proceed to do what I want the rest of the day. That is, unless
I again get distracted and on another round.

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Leads one to looking inward, to concentrate on the lights
that can be lit, the various decorations and ornaments involving lights; the
sharing of other’s lights

Those of you living in sunnier climes don’t perhaps enjoy
the lights to the same degree that those of us who look outside and see gray
and rain, yet more rain. However, I am sure that everyone in his or her own way
has the odd gray day.Think back to
those and focus on what made the gray go away: usually there is some sort of
light involved.

They remind us of the sun, of better weather so we indulge
ourselves with new ones every year and on those days, such as mine today, when
the outside is blanketed in many shades of gray, we even light them all to
celebrate the lights that lead the way, the lights that guide us in the
darkness, the lights that lift our spirits.

But there are other kinds of gray,the gray of the spirit : we must never
forget, that to others we can be the light; we can lift the darkness of loneliness,
we have the capacity to shed the light of human warmth and love.

On this Christmas Day look around, shed some light – you’d
be amazed at how strong the rays can be that return to you.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

I have wonderful memories of childhood Christmases: we
celebrated on Christmas Eve so that a maiden aunt could be with us (a surgical
nurse, unmarried and without children, she always volunteered for the holidays
so that others could be home with their families). It was a small meal of
frozen fruit salad and toasted cheese buns (now that does neither justice as
they were both about the most scrumptious dishes possible!) followed by us
piling into the car to go look at the decorated houses – our pockets stuffed
full of cookies (the one night that our mother didn’t limit us – so, yes, most
of us got sick on cookies at some point during our childhood, but we never
learned the lesson and usually simply repeated it the following year).

My first year in Europe a bunch of us spent Christmas in
Salzburg, Austria and my memories of the kindness of the hotel keeper (wee
present of cookies and chocolates on our beds) as well as the Gregorian
chanting in the cathedral are still ever-present in my mind.

I returned to Europe, married and had a family: Christmas
Eve was still the important event as my husband had also celebrated then.
Although we were often with either my in-laws or my own family for the
holidays, we did have the odd one here and always followed our own family traditions
(I did try my childhood food on them, it didn’t go over that big, but then
neither did the German traditions) so we created our own. To this day,
Christmas celebrations aren’t unless there is shrimp cocktail and smoked salmon:
followed by (some things remain the same) as many cookies as one can – or is
willing – to eat.

The past two years we have celebrated a week in advance.
This has lots of merit in that it is less stressful and one is thereafter free
to participate – or not – in any other activities or invitations: I even
invited my neighbors down for a meal as simply felt like it and had the leisure
to organize.

Still, without young children, it just doesn’t seem the
same. I have been more attracted to a new Christmas song written by Air Bear
Music/Linda’s Boys Music/(Warner-Tamerlane Pub Corp.) and sung by several
musicians: “Grown-up Christmas List”. From Wikipedia: "Grown-Up Christmas List" (sometimes titled
"My Grown-Up Christmas List") is a Christmas song composed by David
Foster (music) and Linda Thompson-Jenner (lyrics),[1]
and originally recorded by Foster (with singer Natalie
Cole on vocals) for his 1990 non-holiday album River of Love. Though
it was also released as a single, the song was not a hit upon its first
appearance. In 1992, however, Amy Grant recorded a version for her second holiday
album, Home for Christmas.
Grant's version featured altered lyrics and an additional verse that Grant
penned herself. Her record label at the time, A&M
Records, promoted the song as the second single from the album, and it
received substantially more radio airplay than the original version by Foster.

I love the chorus: “No more lives torn apart; that wars
would never start and time would heal all hearts. Everyone would have a friend
and right would always win and love would never end.”

I dedicate this to all my family and friends – those who
stand by when times are rough, who celebrate with me when things go well: may
the love never end!

My latest Christmas tree ornament: an oak leaf from Yosemite National Park given to me by my brother this fall.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

“For
the Northern Hemisphere, the moment of winter solstice is when the sun's
elevation with respect to the North Pole is at its most negative value since
the previous December. (The elevation with respect to the South Pole is at its
greatest since the previous December). The hemisphere has its longest night and
shortest day around the moment of solstice with the night within the Arctic
being 24 hours long.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice

Already
toward the end of November I personally start looking forward to the winter
solstice – when the days will finally no longer get shorter. As luck would have
it this year, not only did it fall on a sunny day, but this morning (the day
after so to speak) thanks to our warm wind – the Foehn – one would think that
winter will never arrive.

Now,
we in the Northern Hemisphere know that there will still be dark, gray days; we
know that if we are at the appropriate latitude that it will snow; here in
Geneva we know that there will be days of our cold wind “La Bise”, but for now,
we have hope.

Hope
that as surely as the world turns on its axis, the days will lengthen, the
nights shorten until we reach the apex six months later of Midsummer’s night.
We hope that the coming light will also warm up relationships, will help combat
the cold, will lead us to be friendlier.

If
there are many celebrations around the theme of light, never mind Christmas, it
is probably because since time immemorial mankind needed something to get them
through the long dark nights, something to give them hope of better, longer
days.

Continuing
in the theme of being closer to family and friends, we have already celebrated
Christmas, I have accepted many small (and larger) invitations to gather
together with others, and as the days grow longer will also get up and get back
out on my walking paths. If it isn’t “the mountains are calling and I must go”
(John Muir) it is the lake beckoning where I can listen to the wavelets, look
at the mountains across the way, observe nature in all its variety.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Whichever
way one writes it, it doesn’t really make much difference when one is speaking
of a negative event.However, point of
perception, should one speak of weight loss and change being buying new clothes
to go with the new body, it would be totally positive and better written in the
first manner.

My
thoughts this morning are not quite so positive and the change and loss of
which I write currently are not pleasant. Much has been written throughout
millenniums about loss and I certainly couldn’t add anything new, however,
viewed from one’s own perspective, loss is always new, always personal, always
pertinent to oneself. It doesn’t matter that others have been there, that the
platitudes of “if one door shuts, another opens”, the beauty of “better to have
loved and lost than to not have loved at all”.

Interestingly enough the word loss itself seems to have only come into
use in the 13th/14th century: Wiktionary
states: “EtymologyOld
English has los
"loss, destruction," from a Proto-Germanic root *lausam- (see lose),
but the modern word probably evolved in the 14th century from lost, the original
past participle of lose,
itself from Old Englishlosian "be
lost, perish," from los
"destruction, loss", from a Proto-Germanic root *lausa (compare O.N.
los "the breaking up of an army"), from Proto-Indo-Eeuopean base
*leu- "to loosen, divide, cut apart, untie, separate"

Were
ancient philosophers unacquainted with the notion? That would be hard to
believe – they perhaps just didn’t use the word, but rather spoke of change
instead. “If you don't get what you want, you
suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly
what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your
mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of
the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending
will alter that reality.”
― Socrates

My conclusion: sometimes change and loss are unpleasant
enough to merit floundering a bit in their negativity; to not put a happy spin
on it, nor to justify the better things that may come as a result. Sometimes,
loss is just that: an absence of something or someone that devastates. Time
enough to pick oneself up and adjust to the change: first weep, wail and
wallow!

Friday, December 20, 2013

Last year due to family spreading in all directions, we
celebrated early – and loved it so much that we decided to do the same this
year.

Our shadows in front of the main part of the Vitam'Parc pool

An afternoon spent out at Vitam’ Parc swimming and enjoying
the various hammans, saunas and bubbly water spouts, jets, streams followed by
our favorite “fast” food at older son’s apartment: home-made foie gras – nummy,
nummy, a big thanks to A; smoked salmon (only Alaskan will do), and shrimp
cocktail (always have to have extra as the boys love this stuff). We totally
forgot any vegetables except the Iceberg lettuce under the shrimp cocktail.
Christmas cookies and champagne rounded out the meal before opening a plethora
of presents. Much thought went into them and we were all touched.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Woke up this morning to – astonishingly (and yes that was meant
to be a very sarcastic remark!) -foggy weather still.

Took the bus into town for a funeral and was amazed to find
that they had sun.

Short service, nice to get a bit of closure.

Returning to the countryside and back into the fog, I made
what we are want to call “an executive decision” and stopped at our favorite
watering hole Le Café des Marronniers (http://cafedesmarronniers.ch/
) for lunch. Weather and events made me long for comfort food so chose the
hamburger.

Although it’s labeled the “M” burger, we’re not talking
about your usual burger. In fast-food life I have a personal preference for the
Whopper Jr., then we have a hamburger specialist near the international school
that has always had above-average burgers, but this one is truly a gourmet
experience. The bun is strong enough to not fall apart, although I usually eat
it with a knife and fork; the burger cooked to ones specific taste just like a
steak; lettuce, fresh tomato, pickles, cheese and a sauce that rivals their
tartar sauce for fish. And one gets a small portion of extra sauce. Accompanied
by their thin French fries, there is a reason I wax lyric when describing
it!It may be pricey, but it’s oh so
totally worth the price. My hats off to the chef Fabien and the wait staff as well as they are always welcoming and friendly.

Comforted I wended my way home through the fog – on to
cookie baking as we are celebrating Christmas as a family tomorrow and although
they might not mention it, I am sure that my sons wouldn’t be too happy if I
showed up without their favorites.

Was it written by an elementary school child; a troubled
teen; a frustrated young adult? I will probably never know – and can only hope
that whoever wrote it has been able to find happiness for his or her self, that
whatever burden led them to supplicate passersby to “please” be happy has since
resolved itself.

If only I could let them know that his/her plea found an
echo in my mind and that each day when faced with this request, I do stop and
think and try to be happy.

Sunday, December 15, 2013

In the dark days of late November,
beginning of December until the wonderful day of Dec.22 when the days start
getting longer again, some of us notice more than others the blackness of the
elements.This is the time of year when
every little light, every little glow takes on an extra warmth, a meaning of
life and light to chase away the shadows.

We meet friends more, go out and
about to see the pre-Christmas lights – and it certainly doesn’t matter what
one's religion, or lack thereof, is – we revel in a fireplace, a string of fairy
lights, anything and everything that helps lighten the gloom.

There are the Christmases to plan
(yes, I said Christmases – when one has friends and family far and near, one
tends to multiply, in accordance with the others plans, those celebrations.

This morning, the household had
its Christmas, breakfast on a Sunday morning being about the only time where
the three of us could actually coordinate our separate lives and calendars.

Being the savvy women that we are,
both housemate D-L and I, delegated the making of Christmas breakfast to her love,
Rick.He did us proud, bacon and eggs
(seasoned mind you), table prettily set – and to both of our surprise the bonus
of champagne, colored with cranberry juice for the color, no less!

The eggs cooled as pictures were
taken, which in no way diminished our pleasure in eating them. In fact it was
all so extraordinary that it wasn’t until a couple hours later when I was
questioning the fact that the champagne had really gone to my head, that I
realized that I hadn’t had my coffee!